Could the Amish be the world's politest rebels?

Acts of rebellion among the Amish community include the the use of
rollerskates, telephones and reading the Bible in English, as a BBC2
documentary reveals.

The rules of most Amish communities are staggeringly strictPhoto: AP

By Michael Deacon

7:00AM GMT 18 Feb 2009

You live in 21st-century America, yet you don't have a car. In your house, you have no telephone, television or any other electrical appliance – indeed, you have no mains electricity. Like almost everyone you know, you labour on a farm, one with no equipment more modern than a horse and plough.

This is not a vision of the US in the grip of recession; it's a description of life in an Amish community, the way it is now, and the way it's been since its inhabitants' Swiss and German forebears settled there around 300 years ago. And in an engrossing documentary on BBC2 tonight, Trouble in Amish Paradise, viewers will get to see what that life is like – and why two men belonging to this mesmerisingly strange Christian sect are daring to rebel against it.

Although customs differ from place to place, the rules of most Amish communities are gloweringly strict. That's certainly the case for Ephraim and Jesse Stoltzfus, of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Following rules, says Ephraim, is what being Amish is about. And almost all of them are intended as a rejection of the modern world. That's why Amish people aren't allowed cars or electricity or modern farming equipment. They're not even allowed to be filmed. That Ephraim, Jesse and their families agreed to appear in this documentary shows how strongly they feel.

Ephraim and Jesse don't object to living by rules. But they have come to realise that many of them weren't imposed by God; they're not listed in the Bible. In their community, for example, rollerskates are prohibited. You don't need a doctorate in theology to know that wheeled footwear is a subject about which the Bible is notably silent.

Few Amish people know this, however, because they aren't allowed to have Bibles written in English. Amish Bibles are in antiquated German, a language that most Amish people can't read.

This kind of tyrannical eccentricity, Ephraim and Jesse have decided, isn't "the word of God". It's the word of the Amish bishops, the people who make the rules, and who have a powerful way of enforcing them: the threat of excommunication. Break an Amish rule, and you can be excluded not just from your church, but by your neighbourhood. No other Amish people will so much as talk to you.

Against this bewildering stringency we see Ephraim and Jesse revolt. By "revolt", I don't mean that they fling bricks through windows or set farms on fire. The most scandalous things we see Ephraim do are install a telephone in his house and sing hymns in English (which is prohibited, naturally; they should be in antiquated German).

No, Ephraim and Jesse are Amish, and thus unfailingly pleasant. They make fun of themselves for their lack of education: after Amish bishops accuse them of "insurrection", we see the pair at Ephraim's kitchen table, searching for the word in a dictionary. Ephraim reads the definition aloud, then looks puzzled, before realising that he's read out not "insurrection" but "insertion". They laugh. They are the world's politest rebels.

Their good manners, however, count for nothing. Both are excommunicated. Ephraim's family were having difficulties as it was: they were desperately short of money, having given away their life savings to, in his cheerful words, "needy causes".

Then, at the end of the documentary, Ephraim's five-year-old daughter, Marie, falls ill. It's leukaemia. The nearest hospital is too far away for their horse and buggy, so they accept a lift in a car, belonging to the BBC film crew.

This is a grave breach of Amish rules. Let's hope that God can forgive the Stoltzfuses. Because when Ephraim reaches the gates of Heaven – on a day that I hope is far off – St Peter may have to take some time to assess his fitness for entry. On the credit side, this man will have lived a life of worshipful humbleness, doing everything in his power to help his sick daughter, and giving away every cent he has to those in need. On the debit side, he installed a telephone indoors and praised the Lord in the wrong language.